“Yes, sir,” echoed Peter Bradbury; “mighty well.”
“He’s a great man,” wheezed Uncle Joe Davey; “a great man, Judge Martin Pike; a great man!”
“I expect he has considerable on his mind,” said the Colonel, who had grown very red. “I noticed that he hardly seemed to see us.”
“Yes, sir,” Mr. Bradbury corroborated, with an attempt at an amused laugh. “I noticed it, too. Of course a man with all his cares and interests must git absent-minded now and then.”
“Of course he does,” said the colonel. “A man with all his responsibilities—”
“Yes, that’s so,” came a chorus of the brethren, finding comfort and reassurance as their voices and spirits began to recover from the blight.
“There’s a party at the Judge’s to-night,” said Mr. Bradbury— “kind of a ball Mamie Pike’s givin’ for the young folks. Quite a doin’s, I hear.”
“That’s another thing that’s ruining Canaan,” Mr. Arp declared, morosely. “These entertainments they have nowadays. Spend all the money out of town — band from Indianapolis, chicken salad and darkey waiters from Chicago! And what I want to know is, What’s this town goin’ to do about the nigger question?”
“What about it?” asked Mr. Davey, belligerently.
“What about it?” Mr. Arp mocked, fiercely. “You better say, ‘What about it?’”
“Well, what?” maintained Mr. Davey, steadfastly.
“I’ll bet there ain’t any less than four thousand niggers in Canaan to-day!” Mr. Arp hammered the floor with his stick. “Every last one of ’em criminals, and more comin’ on every train.”
“No such a thing,” said Squire Buckalew, living up to his bounden duty. “You look down the street. There’s the ten-forty-five comin’ in now. I’ll bet you a straight five-cent Peek-a-Boo cigar there ain’t ary nigger on the whole train, except the sleepin’-car porters.”
“What kind of a way to argue is that?” demanded Mr. Arp, hotly. “Bettin’ ain’t proof, is it? Besides, that’s the through express from the East. I meant trains from the South.”
“You didn’t say so,” retorted Buckalew, triumphantly. “Stick to your bet, Eskew, stick to your bet.”
“My bet!” cried the outraged Eskew. “Who offered to bet?”
“You did,” replied the Squire, with perfect assurance and sincerity. The others supported him in the heartiest spirit of on-with-the-dance, and war and joy were unconfined.
A decrepit hack or two, a couple of old-fashioned surreys, and a few “cut-unders” drove by, bearing the newly arrived and their valises, the hotel omnibus depositing several commercial travellers at the door. A solitary figure came from the station on foot, and when it appeared within fair range of the window, Uncle Joe Davey, who had but hovered on the flanks of the combat, first removed his spectacles and wiped them, as though distrusting the vision they offered him, then, replacing them, scanned anew the approaching figure and uttered a smothered cry.
“My Lord A’mighty!” he gasped. “What’s this? Look there!”
They looked. A truce came involuntarily, and they sat in paralytic silence as the figure made its stately and sensational progress along Main Street.
Not only the aged men were smitten. Men shovelling snow from the pavements stopped suddenly in their labors; two women, talking busily on a doorstep, were stilled and remained in frozen attitudes as it passed; a grocer’s clerk, crossing the pavement, carrying a heavily laden basket to his delivery wagon, halted half-way as the figure came near, and then, making a pivot of his heels as it went by, behaved towards it as does the magnetic needle to the pole.
It was that of a tall gentleman, cheerfully, though somewhat with ennui, enduring his nineteenth winter. His long and slender face he wore smiling, beneath an accurately cut plaster of dark hair cornicing his forehead, a fashion followed by many youths of that year. This perfect bang was shown under a round black hat whose rim was so small as almost not to be there at all; and the head was supported by a waxy-white sea-wall of collar, rising three inches above the blue billows of a puffed cravat, upon which floated a large, hollow pearl. His ulster, sporting a big cape at the shoulders, and a tasselled hood over the cape, was of a rough Scotch cloth, patterned in faint, gray-and-white squares the size of baggage-checks, and it was so long that the skirts trailed in the snow. His legs were lost in the accurately creased, voluminous garments that were the tailors’ canny reaction from the tight trousers with which the ‘Eighties had begun: they were, in color, a palish russet, broadly striped with gray, and, in size, surpassed the milder spirit of fashion so far as they permitted a liberal knee action to take place almost without superficial effect. Upon his feet glistened long shoes, shaped, save for the heels, like sharp racing-shells; these were partially protected by tan-colored low gaiters with flat, shiny, brown buttons. In one hand the youth swung a bone-handled walking-stick, perhaps an inch and a half in diameter, the other carried a yellow leather banjo-case, upon the outer side of which glittered the embossed-silver initials, “E. B.” He was smoking, but walked with his head up, making use, however, of a gait at that time new to Canaan, a seeming superbly irresponsible lounge, engendering much motion of the shoulders, producing an effect of carelessness combined with independence — an effect which the innocent have been known to hail as an unconscious one.
He looked about him as he came, smilingly, with an expression of princely amusement — as an elderly cabinet minister, say, strolling about a village where he had spent some months in his youth, a hamlet which he had then thought large and imposing, but which, being revisited after years of cosmopolitan glory, appeals to his whimsy and his pity. The youth’s glance at the court-house unmistakably said: “Ah, I recall that odd little box. I thought it quite large in the days before I became what I am now, and I dare say the good townsfolk still think it an imposing structure!” With everything in sight he deigned to be amused, especially with the old faces in the “National House” windows. To these he waved his stick with airy graciousness.
“My soul!” said Mr. Davey. “It seems to know some of us!”
“Yes,” agreed Mr. Arp, his voice recovered, “and I know IT.”
“You do?” exclaimed the Colonel.
“I do, and so do you. It’s Fanny Louden’s boy, ‘Gene, come home for his Christmas holidays.”
“By George! you’re right,” cried Flitcroft; “I recognize him now.”
“But what’s the matter with him?” asked Mr. Bradbury, eagerly. “Has he joined some patent-medicine troupe?”
“Not a bit,” replied Eskew. “He went East to college last fall.”
“Do they MAKE the boys wear them clothes?” persisted Bradbury. “Is it some kind of uniform?”
“I don’t care what it is,” said Jonas Tabor. “If I was Henry Louden I wouldn’t let him wear ’em around here.”
“Oh, you wouldn’t, wouldn’t you, Jonas?” Mr. Arp employed the accents of sarcasm. “I’d like to see Henry Louden try to interfere with ‘Gene Bantry. Fanny’d lock the old fool up in the cellar.”
The lofty vision lurched out of view.
“I reckon,” said the Colonel, leaning forward to see the last of it— “I reckon Henry Louden’s about the saddest case of abused step-father I ever saw.”
“It’s his own fault,” said Mr. Arp— “twice not havin’ sense enough not to marry. Him with a son of his own, too!”
“Yes,” assented the Colonel, “marryin’ a widow with a son of her own, and that widow Fanny!”
“Wasn’t it just the same with her first husband — Bantry?” Mr. Davey asked, not for information, as he immediately answered himself. “You bet it was! Didn’t she always rule the roost? Yes, she did. She made a god of ‘Gene from the day he was born. Bantry’s house was run for him, like Louden’s is now.”
“And look,” exclaimed Mr. Arp, with satisfaction, “at the way he’s turned out!”
“He ain’t turned out at all yet; he’s too young,” sai
d Buckalew. “Besides, clothes don’t make the man.”
“Wasn’t he smokin’ a cigareet!” cried Eskew, triumphantly. This was final.
“It’s a pity Henry Louden can’t do something for his own son,” said Mr. Bradbury. “Why don’t he send him away to college?”
“Fanny won’t let him,” chuckled Mr. Arp, malevolently. “Takes all their spare change to keep ‘Gene there in style. I don’t blame her. ‘Gene certainly acts the fool, but that Joe Louden is the orneriest boy I ever saw in an ornery world-full.”
“He always was kind of misCHEEvous,” admitted Buckalew. “I don’t think he’s mean, though, and it does seem kind of not just right that Joe’s father’s money — Bantry didn’t leave anything to speak of — has to go to keepin’ ‘Gene on the fat of the land, with Joe gittin’ up at half-past four to carry papers, and him goin’ on nineteen years old.”
“It’s all he’s fit for!” exclaimed Eskew. “He’s low down, I tell ye. Ain’t it only last week Judge Pike caught him shootin’ craps with Pike’s nigger driver and some other nigger hired-men in the alley back of Pike’s barn.”
Mr. Schindlinger, the retired grocer, one of the silent members, corroborated Eskew’s information. “I heert dot, too,” he gave forth, in his fat voice. “He blays dominoes pooty often in der room back off Louie Farbach’s tsaloon. I see him myself. Pooty often. Blayin’ fer a leedle money — mit loafers! Loafers!”
“Pretty outlook for the Loudens!” said Eskew Arp, much pleased. “One boy a plum fool and dressed like it, the other gone to the dogs already!”
“What could you expect Joe to be?” retorted Squire Buckalew. “What chance has he ever had? Long as I can remember Fanny’s made him fetch and carry for ‘Gene. ‘Gene’s had everything — all the fancy clothes, all the pocket-money, and now college!”
“You ever hear that boy Joe talk politics?” asked Uncle Joe Davey, crossing a cough with a chuckle. “His head’s so full of schemes fer running this town, and state, too, it’s a wonder it don’t bust. Henry Louden told me he’s see Joe set around and study by the hour how to save three million dollars for the state in two years.”
“And the best he can do for himself,” added Eskew, “is deliverin’ the Daily Tocsin on a second-hand Star bicycle and gamblin’ with niggers and riff-raff! None of the nice young folks invite him to their doin’s any more.”
“That’s because he’s got so shabby he’s quit goin’ with em,” said Buckalew.
“No, it ain’t,” snapped Mr. Arp. “It’s because he’s so low down. He’s no more ‘n a town outcast. There ain’t ary one of the girls ‘ll have a thing to do with him, except that rip-rarin’ tom-boy next door to Louden’s; and the others don’t have much to do with HER, neither, I can tell ye. That Arie Tabor—”
Colonel Flitcroft caught him surreptitiously by the arm. “SH, Eskew!” he whispered. “Look out what you’re sayin’!”
“You needn’t mind me,” Jonas Tabor spoke up, crisply. “I washed my hands of all responsibility for Roger’s branch of the family long ago. Never was one of ’em had the energy or brains to make a decent livin’, beginning with Roger; not one worth his salt! I set Roger’s son up in business, and all the return he ever made me was to go into bankruptcy and take to drink, till he died a sot, like his wife did of shame. I done all I could when I handed him over my store, and I never expect to lift a finger for ’em again. Ariel Tabor’s my grandniece, but she didn’t act like it, and you can say anything you like about her, for what I care. The last time I spoke to her was a year and a half ago, and I don’t reckon I’ll ever trouble to again.”
“How was that, Jonas?” quickly inquired Mr. Davey, who, being the eldest of the party, was the most curious. “What happened?”
“She was out in the street, up on that high bicycle of Joe Louden’s. He was teachin’ her to ride, and she was sittin’ on it like a man does. I stopped and told her she wasn’t respectable. Sixteen years old, goin’ on seventeen!”
“What did she say?”
“Laughed,” said Jonas, his voice becoming louder as the recital of his wrongs renewed their sting in his soul. “Laughed!”
“What did you do?”
“I went up to her and told her she wasn’t a decent girl, and shook the wheel.” Mr. Tabor illustrated by seizing the lapels of Joe Davey and shaking him. “I told her if her grandfather had any spunk she’d git an old-fashioned hidin’ for behavin’ that way. And I shook the wheel again.” Here Mr. Tabor, forgetting in the wrath incited by the recollection that he had not to do with an inanimate object, swung the gasping and helpless Mr. Davey rapidly back and forth in his chair. “I shook it good and hard!”
“What did she do then?” asked Peter Bradbury.
“Fell off on me,” replied Jonas, violently. “On purpose!”
“I wisht she’d killed ye,” said Mr. Davey, in a choking voice, as, released, he sank back in his chair.
“On purpose!” repeated Jonas. “And smashed a straw hat I hadn’t had three months! All to pieces! So it couldn’t be fixed!”
“And what then?” pursued Bradbury.
“SHE ran,” replied Jonas, bitterly— “ran! And Joe Louden — Joe Louden—” He paused and gulped.
“What did he do?” Peter leaned forward in his chair eagerly.
The narrator of the outrage gulped again, and opened and shut his mouth before responding.
“He said if I didn’t pay for a broken spoke on his wheel he’d have to sue me!”
No one inquired if Jonas had paid, and Jonas said no more. The recollection of his wrongs, together with the illustrative violence offered to Mr. Davey, had been too much for him. He sank back, panting, in his chair, his hands fluttering nervously over his heart, and closed his eyes.
“I wonder why,” ruminated Mr. Bradbury— “I wonder why ‘Gene Bantry walked up from the deepo. Don’t seem much like his style. Should think he’d of rode up in a hack.”
“Sho!” said Uncle Joe Davey, his breath recovered. “He wanted to walk up past Judge Pike’s, to see if there wasn’t a show of Mamie’s bein’ at the window, and give her a chance to look at that college uniform and banjo-box and new walk of his.”
Mr. Arp began to show signs of uneasiness.
“I’d like mighty well to know,” he said, shifting round in his chair, “if there’s anybody here that’s been able to answer the question I PUT, yesterday, just before we went home. You all tried to, but I didn’t hear anything I could consider anyways near even a fair argument.”
“Who tried to?” asked Buckalew, sharply, sitting up straight. “What question?”
“What proof can you bring me,” began Mr. Arp, deliberately, “that we folks, modernly, ain’t more degenerate than the ancient Romans?”
II. A RESCUE
MAIN STREET, ALREADY muffled by the snow, added to its quietude a frozen hush where the wonder-bearing youth pursued his course along its white, straight way. None was there in whom impertinence overmastered astonishment, or who recovered from the sight in time to jeer with effect; no “Trab’s boy” gathered courage to enact in the thoroughfare a scene of mockery and of joy. Leaving business at a temporary stand-still behind him, Mr. Bantry swept his long coat steadily over the snow and soon emerged upon that part of the street where the mart gave way to the home. The comfortable houses stood pleasantly back from the street, with plenty of lawn and shrubbery about them; and often, along the picket-fences, the laden branches of small cedars, bending low with their burden, showered the young man’s swinging shoulders glitteringly as he brushed by.
And now that expression he wore — the indulgent amusement of a man of the world — began to disintegrate and show signs of change. It became finely grave, as of a high conventionality, lofty, assured, and mannered, as he approached the Pike mansion. (The remotest stranger must at once perceive that the Canaan papers could not have called it otherwise without pain.)
It was a big, smooth-stone-faced house, product of the ‘Seventies
, frowning under an outrageously insistent mansard, capped by a cupola, and staring out of long windows overtopped with “ornamental” slabs. Two cast-iron deer, painted death-gray, twins of the same mould, stood on opposite sides of the front walk, their backs towards it and each other, their bodies in profile to the street, their necks bent, however, so that they gazed upon the passer-by — yet gazed without emotion. Two large, calm dogs guarded the top of the steps leading to the front-door; they also were twins and of the same interesting metal, though honored beyond the deer by coats of black paint and shellac. It was to be remarked that these dogs were of no distinguishable species or breed, yet they were unmistakably dogs; the dullest must have recognized them as such at a glance, which was, perhaps, enough. It was a hideous house, important-looking, cold, yet harshly aggressive, a house whose exterior provoked a shuddering guess of the brass lambrequins and plush fringes within; a solid house, obviously — nay, blatantly — the residence of the principal citizen, whom it had grown to resemble, as is the impish habit of houses; and it sat in the middle of its flat acre of snowy lawn like a rich, fat man enraged and sitting straight up in bed to swear.
And yet there was one charming thing about this ugly house. Some workmen were enclosing a large side porch with heavy canvas, evidently for festal purposes. Looking out from between two strips of the canvas was the rosy and delicate face of a pretty girl, smiling upon Eugene Bantry as he passed. It was an obviously pretty face, all the youth and prettiness there for your very first glance; elaborately pretty, like the splendid profusion of hair about and above it — amber-colored hair, upon which so much time had been spent that a circle of large, round curls rose above the mass of it like golden bubbles tipping a coronet.
The girl’s fingers were pressed thoughtfully against her chin as Eugene strode into view; immediately her eyes widened and brightened. He swung along the fence with the handsomest appearance of unconsciousness, until he reached a point nearly opposite her. Then he turned his head, as if haphazardly, and met her eyes. At once she threw out her hand towards him, waving him a greeting — a gesture which, as her fingers had been near her lips, was a little like throwing a kiss. He crooked an elbow and with a one-two-three military movement removed his small-brimmed hat, extended it to full arm’s-length at the shoulder-level, returned it to his head with Life-Guard precision. This was also new to Canaan. He was letting Mamie Pike have it all at once.
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 69
